1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a system and method for building an instant Web portal related to topics of interest based on a user profile. An instant Web portal is a collection of all relevant links (addresses to Web pages) related to topics of interest. The instant Web portal serves to reduce the interaction costs that users incur in visiting multiple Web sites related to a topic, and searching or navigating different portal Web sites.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Navigating the Web today is one of the most difficult tasks for a Web user. The sheer volume of information available makes it difficult for both the user and search engines to extract and collect relevant information. Navigation typically consists of the following steps: setting a goal, visiting known Web sites, determining which search engines to use, typing a search query by translating the user""s thoughts to a language and grammar a search engine or Web page having a query prompt can understand, traversing the results, and refining the search. The quality of the results returned depends on the user""s ability to correctly translate the search goal into search grammar appropriate for a search engine, and the search engine""s performance. The chances of two people constructing the exact same query (i.e., the same set or sequence of words) to accomplish one goal are low. Also, the same person may construct the query differently on two separate attempts. In addition, having different grammar for different search engines aggravates the problem. Query construction, thus, is an important, difficult, and often repeated step in Web navigation and search.
Web portals act as good starting points for navigating the Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web (the Web). A Web portal in the context of the present invention is defined as a collection of relevant links to text, voice, video image or other data, etc. all on a single Web page. With a Web activity goal in mind, a user could step through the different directory or tool related links on a portal Web site and get closer to accomplishing a search goal. The alternative to this style of navigation is to visit individual Web sites related to a topic of interest looking for information on the topic. While portals offer a good single starting location for most topics, they suffer from at least the following limitations: (1) they usually do not provide a complete view of the Web (statistics show that information links provided on portal sites cover less than 50% of the complete Web); and (2) it is difficult to ascertain a complete picture of what a user is trying to accomplish by observing the clicking patterns on a Web site. Users tend to jump from the portal to a destination site. When that occurs, the portal Web site loses the user and has no way of detecting the user""s current context (goal or activity).
Current search engines only categorize the information for which the user is searching. That is, the search engine may provide a general category for which related links may be stored. For example, if the user enters xe2x80x9cPorsche Boxsterxe2x80x9d as the search entry, the search engine may produce Web sites related to Porsche Boxsters, as well as provide a category of xe2x80x9cAutomobilesxe2x80x9d, of which links to Web sites related to automobiles may be present, many of which may not be at all relevant to Porsche Boxsters. Therefore, the user must successively and manually refine a search entry or submit multiple queries to different search engines and Web sites until the user finds the desired information.
Internet browser add-ons, such as Alexa Internet, provide additional services to help locate Web sites related to the Web page that the user is currently browsing. Alexa Internet uses crawling, archiving, categorizing, and data-mining techniques to build xe2x80x9cRelated Linksxe2x80x9d lists for millions of Web Universal Resource Locator (URL) addresses. One technique used is to analyze the links on the crawled pages to find related Web sites. The day-to-day use of the Related Links list also helps build and refine the data. As the service is used, the requested URLs are logged. By looking at high-level trends, Alexa Internet can deduce relationships between Web sites. For example, if thousands of users go directly from site A to site B, then Alexa Internet may deduce that the two sites are likely to be related. Even though Alexa Internet is capable of ascertaining xe2x80x9ctrendsxe2x80x9d among a plurality of Web users between a variety of Web sites, Alexa Internet is still not xe2x80x9cpersonalizedxe2x80x9d for any one particular user, and it utilizes no information about a particular user in making its deductions.
Another Internet browser add-on called Letizia, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, operates as a user interface in conjunction with an Internet browser. Letizia tracks the behavior of a Web user and attempts to anticipate items of interest by performing concurrent, autonomous exploration of Web page links from the user""s current Web location (Web page). In other words, Letizia uses a technique of collecting and parsing information on neighborhood linksxe2x80x94links that are in close proximity (one or 2 xe2x80x9cclicksxe2x80x9d away) from a Web page that the user is presenting browsing. However, Letizia only makes educated xe2x80x9cguessesxe2x80x9d as to what links from the current Web page the user might be interested, based on the user""s current Web browsing behavior. But, Letizia does not search for other potentially relevant Web pages not linked to the browsed pages, nor does Letizia utilize any other personalized information about a particular user in making its Web page link recommendations.